What stats do you need to understand for your website: Part 3
Welcome Back!
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Over the last 2 weeks, I’ve been posting about stats or metrics used to understand activity on our websites. The first post can be found here and the second post can be found here. In the previous posts, we discussed what can be learned from Jetpack – a plugin available to WordPress websites. In today’s post, we are going to move on to Google Analytics – something that is available to all websites.
Google Analytics
Moving on to the topic of Google Analytics. Regardless of how you attach your site to Google Analytics, the full array of results can be overwhelming. I’ve included a video on how to attach Google Analytics to your site in a previous post. Before we go on to the description, keep in mind that with a little elbow grease, any website can be hooked up to a Google Analytics account and the information described in the previous posts can also be viewed via Google Analytics – I generally don’t like that section of the display when I can rely on Jetpack stats but that’s just my personal preference.
I like allowing a small snapshot of Google Analytics information to exist on the dashboard of a website for several reasons. The most important reason is it is less overwhelming. By focusing attention on a small number of items, the information can be meaningful rather than intimidating. For that reason, I included a series of instructions in the first post of this series to help with connecting your site to Google Analytics.
The starting point of the Google Analytics display is typically similar to the screenshot below. The two labels show “Last 30 Days” and “Sessions.” This information will show the visitors for the last 30 days (and that time period can be changed). At the bottom of the display is “Session Duration” which indicates the average time people spend on the website. Another interesting piece of information is “Bounce Rate.” This indicates how fast people leave the site. The higher the number the quicker people leave. These last two numbers I find very important. The longer a visitor spends on your site, the more likely they are to take positive actions – like buy one of your books! The Bounce rate will indicate how well you are resonating with visitors. One thing that many websites don’t do well is to clearly identify the owner. If a visitor can’t determine if they are in the right spot quickly, they will easily leave – or bounce – to try to find another choice. Make sure your “above the fold” information is very clear.
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Looking at the above screenshot, if the “Session” menu is changed to “Location” as seen in the screenshot below, you can view a graphic display as well as a list of where visitors are geographically located when they visit a website. The information and numbers may surprise you.
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If that drop-down is changed again – to “Technology” — you will be able to see the type of device people use when viewing a website. Again, this information may not be what you expected.
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So…why all this information, beyond the idea that “Knowledge is power?” Severalfold. As authors, we want people to buy our books. If we go back to the initial post of this series, you’ll remember that Google doesn’t sell books – Amazon, et al do. But visitors to your website hopefully sign up to your mailing list, subscribe to your blog, click on links to find you on social media, and click on links to purchase your books. By studying the actions of the audience, or visitors to our site, we can determine if any of this is being achieved.
Like with many things, we need to “read the tea leaves” to see if our efforts are paying off. For example, if you have 100 people visiting your website and no one is clicking on the Facebook icon to follow you on Facebook, perhaps it isn’t visible enough. If those hundred people visit your book detail pages and no one clicks on a buy link to purchase a copy at Amazon, etc., perhaps look at the layout of that page and see if the buy links aren’t obvious enough. See if the blurb isn’t compelling enough.
And if your audience is primarily from India and the Far East – as is true of one of my sites – there is not a lot of point offering a US-only giveaway as that will just annoy your readers.
I hope you learned a lot from this series of posts. Be sure to reach out in the comments if you have any questions – I’m always happy to help!
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